Although the Covert Operations Directorate dealt in intelligence, it maintained public outposts and private holdings on both the East and West Banks. Its daily business involved exchanging intelligence and liaising with various corporations and state governments, along with providing technical support and conducting operations within the Confluence.
In the Center City east of the Great Rift, because it lay squarely within the East Bank's sphere of influence, the Directorate operated even more openly. The same held true for the Strategic Affairs Department in the West—a tacit understanding between both sides.
Consequently, finding such places was never difficult.
They were usually situated inside a Center City.
Just like Great Shun, corporations and organizations across the Federation maintained their own private security forces. An official agency like the Covert Operations Directorate possessed an even more comprehensive defense apparatus; normally, no one had the nerve or the strength to make trouble on their doorstep.
Puppet did not care about any of that. A Center City was typically garrisoned by only a single martial artist, and because the Federation's Confluence faced no threat comparable to Great Shun's former imperial household, there were rarely any martial artists stationed in the Confluence at all.
That was why he dared to strike directly at these public outposts.
The mercenary group rented three armored defense vehicles and waited outside the city.
Puppet entered the Center City first. Yet the moment he stepped within the city perimeter, the massive field organisms detected the surge of a high-energy biological field. Responding immediately, they notified the municipal center that an unregistered martial artist had breached the area.
This instantly triggered an alarm. The destructive power of martial artists was known to all. The municipal center promptly sent a telegram to their garrisoned martial artist, who was vacationing outside the city, urging him to rush back at top speed.
Given a martial artist's speed, if he chose to exert his own strength, covering that distance would take only a few minutes. Traveling by car or airship, by contrast, could easily take over half an hour.
Puppet had a clear objective. Once inside the city, he charged down the main boulevard of Atlantawa Center City at maximum speed, heading straight for the Directorate's compound.
He had prepared himself to be intercepted, but no obstacles appeared along the way, allowing him to reach the Directorate's front entrance unimpeded. The moment he ground to a halt, his specially made protective boots kicked up a spray of sparks and smoke. A blast of scorching heat rolled outward, followed by a succession of rumbling thuds.
The Directorate's field organism detected his approach and immediately blared a warning. Puppet turned a deaf ear. Flicking the long cane in his hand, he strode onward.
After two consecutive warnings, because he had crossed the defensive perimeter, the autocannons mounted around the compound opened fire without hesitation. Yet when the rounds struck his field and spiritual fire, they achieved nothing at all, dropping away like pebbles as they neared his body. He even casually swatted aside a direct-fire cannon shell with one hand, warping the armor-piercing projectile and batting it away.
The armed guards looked on in shock and terror. Was this... a martial artist?!
The Bloodstaff pulsed, releasing a wave of mental force. In an instant, every guard in the area rolled their eyes back and collapsed one after another. The gunfire all around fell silent.
Puppet dropped low, kicked off the ground, and shot forward like a shooting star, hurtling straight toward the compound's main building! Midway through his charge, however, a blur slammed in from the flank, cutting off his momentum. The two collided and crashed into the street to the side, the booming impact shattering a vast swath of pavement into pulverized rock.
Having arrived just in time to stop him, the opposing martial artist rolled to one side. As Puppet rose, the defender's body flared with crimson brilliance, and he threw a punch straight toward Puppet.
Mid-swing, the fist was caught firmly by a hand blazing with golden light. Puppet hauled him forward and slammed him toward the ground, prompting the man to throw up his arms in defense.
This blow should have pressed Puppet's advantage, but he hesitated for an imperceptible fraction of a second—the delicate balance between his mind and body had interfered with him once more.
The enemy martial artist instantly seized upon the opening, tore free of Puppet's grip, and lunged forward. In a flash, both vanished from the spot.
With a tremendous crash, thick smoke and dust erupted from the curtain wall of a skyscraper hundreds of meters away. A heartbeat later, a gaping crater blew open on the side of a building across the street, and the concussive shock waves and billowing dust rapidly cascaded farther into the distance.
From high above, one would have seen trails of scattered dust and flashing bursts of light streaking in a straight line toward the far edge of the city. Along their path, a building slowly collapsed inward.
Brilliant flashes continued to erupt across the district, flaring in one location only to reappear in an entirely different direction seconds later.
Reporters and daring citizens scrambled to high ground, frantically using their cochlear worms or field organisms to capture the spectacle.
The overcast sky filtered the sunlight into a somber, muted gray, but the relentless booms echoing across the sizable Center City ignited the crowd's excitement.
Clashes between martial artists were a rare sight. Though fear lingered in the onlookers' eyes, it was overwhelmed by raw thrill. When massive explosions ripped through the air not far from where they stood, the rushing gale whipping their clothes and hair, they opened their eyes and screamed in exhilaration.
At that moment, corporations throughout the Center City began pumping high-energy nutrient fluids into their active conscious entities. Unaware of the attacker's identity or motives, they had to ensure their own safety above all else.
The Blood Staff Mercenary Group entered the city a step behind Puppet. Before long, various security forces and military units cordoned off the city's gates. Bio-weapon constructs could be seen flying across the sky, dispatched to contain the neighborhoods where unrest had begun to flare.
Simultaneously, airships took off from the mooring towers standing throughout the city, racing toward the scene of the conflict.
Speeders emerged from various corners of the city, packed with eccentrically dressed figures howling and screeching as they roared past. Some even fired shots into the air, caught up in the wild frenzy.
To avoid drawing unwanted attention, the mercenaries masked their field signatures and drove down the road only slightly faster than normal.
They had no fear of being trapped by the city lockdown. As long as the boss defeated the opposing martial artist, no one left could pose a threat to them. As for the boss losing? The thought never even crossed their minds.
A deafening boom sounded nearby, the violent tremor jostling the vehicle and sending the occupants lunging forward in their seats.
Once they cleared the building blocking their view, a crew member pointed out the window, his face flush with awe and excitement. "Look over there!"
Everyone turned to look. A mooring tower at least thirty stories high was rumbling downward in collapse, dragging down an airship that had not yet managed to take flight. Before their very eyes, it slammed into the earth and detonated into an enormous fireball.
As they stared, an intensely blinding light flared and swept across their vision. Having prepared in advance, they had already donned protective goggles, but those watching with the naked eye shrieked in agony as if struck blind.
When the mercenaries blinked away their tears and their vision cleared, they stared ahead in stunned disbelief. In the distance stretched a charred, blackened chasm over ten meters wide.
Along its path, buildings, vehicles, and sidewalks had been wiped out in a single stroke.
From higher vantage points, one could clearly see a colossal, dark scar carving straight across the Center City.
Yet after that blow, the ceaseless clashes finally ceased. Watching factions could not help but wonder: had that single strike brought the battle to an end?
At the head of the chasm, Puppet stood before a mound of ruins. Ahead of him lay the defeated martial artist, half-buried in pulverized brick and dirt. The man's chest and abdomen were completely caved in, his internal organs and bones reduced to a pulpy mess.
Only his limbs and head appeared somewhat intact.
Yet a martial artist's tenacious vitality kept him alive, though barely. Recovering his combat capability in the short term was entirely out of the question.
During their clash, the defender had noticed something odd about Puppet's offensive rhythm—a faint, recurring stutter. In truth, Puppet had been searching for his balance, occasionally forced to prioritize his body's stability above all else.
The defender had swiftly deduced that Puppet was suffering from some lingering injury or flaw. After a minute of fierce combat and probing, he had unraveled the pattern, seizing the moment of Puppet's hesitation to unleash a full-power spiritual impact, heedless of the catastrophic destruction and casualties it would inflict upon his own city.
Formidable though Puppet was, taking a direct hit from a spiritual impact would have severely crippled him, leaving him as good as dead. Yet at that life-or-death juncture, the shock forced his mutated tissue to erupt with power, instantly establishing equilibrium and allowing him to evade in the nick of time.
Conversely, after unleashing the spiritual impact, the defender had suffered a split-second delay. Puppet had seized the opportunity, pouring all his strength into a devastating strike that left the man critically injured and entirely incapacitated.
Standing in place, Puppet quietly savored the revelation from a moment ago. In that fleeting instant, he felt as though he had grasped something, though the sensation was already fading.
It showed that the pressure of mortal peril made it far easier to squeeze out one's potential and pinpoint that critical juncture.
Yet if one failed to find it at such a moment, the collapse of that equilibrium would tear the body apart. It was a walk along the razor's edge of life and death.
He did not shrink back from the danger. Instead, he felt that this was a viable path forward. After taking a moment to recover, he set off toward the Covert Operations Directorate.
In just a few seconds, he reappeared at the Directorate's front entrance, where the Blood Staff Mercenary Group arrived to rendezvous with him.
His earlier mental attack had already neutralized most of the armed personnel in the vicinity.
Thus, when Puppet led his mercenaries through the doors in broad daylight, not a single person stood in their way.
The bald woman tapped her cochlear worm and reported, "Boss, the nearest martial artists are heading this way. They'll be here in half an hour at most, and there might be more than one."
Chapter 1242